Published: Thursday, February 14, 2013 at 1:30 p.m.

Last Modified: Thursday, February 14, 2013 at 1:30 p.m.

Few establishments in Houma have maintained the same look, feel and aroma for generations of customers.

At Scarlet Scoop Ice Cream Parlor, 300 Barrow St., time stands still inside the 800-square-foot eatery that has become a fixture in downtown Houma.

“The store is truly a tradition here in Houma,” said Bryan Nelson, the 53-year-old owner. “Everybody knows it; everybody's grown up with it. We can't change a lot because people were brought here as a child, and now they bring their children. It's the exact same chairs, the exact same wallpaper and the exact same floor. That's what makes us so special.”

Scarlet Scoop prides itself on being an old-time ice cream parlor. They have the traditional candy, soda fountains, real malts and other stuff people haven't seen since they were children.

“We just stick to ice cream,” Nelson said. “We don't do snowballs, coffee drinks or any of that other stuff.”

During Carnival season, customers can't get enough of Scarlet Scoop's best-selling specialty flavor: king cake ice cream. The mixture of cinnamon ice cream with sugar icing and bits of king cake was the first flavor Nelson ever came up with about 15 years ago.

“Right now that's all we sell all day long is king cake ice cream,” he said. “We keep it a couple weeks after Mardi Gras because everyone will come in and buy containers of it because they know they're not going to get it again until next year.”

Nelson produces seasonal flavors that people yearn for all year long. During Easter, Elmer's gold brick ice cream (vanilla ice cream, gold brick chocolate and pecans) is very popular. This spring he is bringing back banana foster ice cream created from the original recipe of Brennan's Restaurant. In the summer he makes Ponchatoula strawberry ice cream from fresh Ponchatoula strawberries. In October he makes Lagniappe Pop Rouge ice cream for the Chauvin Culture and Heritage Festival.

The most ingenious of Nelson's recent flavors is the BP oil spill ice cream. Derived the week of the April 2010 disaster, the confection of vanilla ice cream, chocolate cookies, peanuts and fudge became a viral hit after it was posted on Facebook.

“I heard a bar in Grand Isle was making tar ball shots, so I figured I could do an oil spill ice cream,” Nelson said. “I only made two or three gallons of it, and it sold out within one day. We were supposed to stop making it when they capped the well, but it's been so popular that we're still making it today.”

For Nelson, working at Scarlet Scoop is all he has ever done. It began as a summer job at age 15. As a 17-year old senior at South Terrebonne, Nelson bought the store from Curtis Eschete in October 1977.

“The store was going to be shut down,” he said. “I just like the business, and I thought this was a great opportunity.”

Nelson saved every penny from his first few years in business, and in the beginning of 1980 shut down Scarlet Scoop. Over a six-month period, the building was gutted down to the dirt floor and re-done to what it looks like today.

There used to be three Scarlet Scoop parlors: one stood on Grand Caillou Road for 16 years and another on West Park Avenue for five. However, Nelson said the best thing he ever did was close those stores to focus solely on the original.

“When you do all of that and expand you become a McDonald's,” Nelson said. “But when you're one and I'm in the store, everything is done right. Customers come here and know they're going to get what they want and that it's going to be right and it's going to be good.”

While he has three employees, Nelson still puts in long hours at the ice cream parlor. That kind of dedication has made him part of the extended family of his customers, who love to share their childhood memories of Scarlet Scoop.

“If I'm off a day and not in the store, they'll ask where I'm at,” he said. “I've seen a lot of people grow up. They came here on their first date, and now they have children. I'm just part of that little thing in their lives. It's just somebody they know that it's always going to be here when they come in.”

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